For a first-class collection of culture, be sure to check out the work on display at Vernon Hills' Cuneo Museum and Gardens.
Don't worry about packing a snack. This museum has a great restaurant so you can keep the fun going.
With its kid-friendly vibe, this museum is a great spot for families.
Parking is plentiful, so patrons can feel free to bring their vehicles.

The eye-catching artwork at Des Plaines' McDonald's Museum is sure to perk your pupils right up.
Pick up a tasty meal at their restaurant, located conveniently within the museum.
Bring the whole family to this museum, where kiddos are welcomed with open arms.
Parking is plentiful, so visitors can feel free to bring their vehicles.

A kids' firehouse sets the stage for hands-on, imaginative activities at FireZone, where actual firefighters show off fire engines, explain educational displays, and oversee games for kids of all ages. In addition to children’s parties and drop-in play sessions, FireZone runs school field trips, caters to adults with corporate training days, and rents fire trucks for picnics, parades, and festivals.

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In the rich and varied landscape of Chicago museums, one stands out among the rest: the Art Institute of Chicago. Named TripAdvisor’s top museum in the world in 2014, the AIC is home to more than 260,000 works of art, including its formidable (and highly trafficked) collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. But beneath the hoopla of these storied works—in fact, beneath the first level of the museum itself—lies a quirkier collection of European and American pieces. The Thorne Miniature Rooms present to-scale replicas of historical interiors. We sat down with the Lindsay Mican Morgan, the keeper of the rooms, to learn more about their origins and all-ages appeal.It's the Little Things That CountMican Morgan is deciding where she would live if a ray gun shrank her down to the rooms’ scale, where one inch represents one real-world foot.“I want to go to the modern rooms … the London nighttime scene [above] is gorgeous. But I think in reality, I would most enjoy some of the kitchens. I love all the pots and pans.”Mini kitchenwares made to scale, such as the ones in the 1752 Pennsylvania kitchen above, are just some of the gallery’s incredible, historically accurate details crafted by hand in the 1930s. To wit: one of the rooms boasts a gentleman’s secretary, complete with a drawer within a drawer and a key that really works. In others, viewers can just barely glimpse a side room through a doorway, but it’s fully furnished anyway. And tables throughout the rooms are scattered with in-progress checkers games or half-finished drinks.Despite their lived-in feel, one element is purposely omitted from every room: residents. According to Mican Morgan, it helps viewers, especially young ones, imagine themselves inside. In fact, it’s not uncommon for Mican Morgan to see kids in the gallery planning adventures in each room, or picking out the bed they would most like to sleep in.“I think the most charming thing is, sometimes I’ll hear [adults] talking about coming when they were a child,” says Mican Morgan. Mrs. James Ward Thorne, the dollhouse and miniatures enthusiast who commissioned the collection, gifted it to the museum in 1941. Since then, perusing the rooms that span specific eras and regions has become a cross-generational tradition for many.The History of the RoomsThe Great Depression was a stroke of luck for basically no one, except Mrs. Thorne. For a woman of her stature, it made her project extremely affordable—even commissioning custom mini couches—and allowed her to build one of the largest miniature collections on record.Her collection isn’t just large, though. It’s also accurate, thanks to Mrs. Thorne’s “a little outside the normal” passion for style and design, as well as her plentiful source material. When her tiny rooms were being built, World War I had just ended, and many of Europe’s struggling upper-class families were displaying their insular households to the public. Mrs. Thorne took to touring those homes and visiting American museums, where displays of period rooms were in vogue.In Mrs. Thorne’s era, even Queen Mary was so fascinated by miniatures that the English people gifted her an elaborate dollhouse complete with working plumbing. “Whatever the Queen does, every society lady wants to be involved in [it],” Mican Morgan notes. So it’s not a surprise that soon after, Mrs. Thorne and her team of master craftsmen began work on these now-famous miniature rooms.Mrs. Thorne's Enduring LegacyThe rooms are now decades old, and Mican Morgan reports that maintaining them is a challenging task, sometimes requiring tiny needlepoint. Arguably, the hardest part of Mican Morgan’s job is honoring the exacting vision Mrs. Thorne laid out in her sketches, which covered everything from each room’s particular layout to its lighting. “She was very specific about the time of day, the time of year. There was supposed to be a very specific type of lighting,” she says, which included natural lighting.Occasionally, hewing to Mrs. Thorne’s vision means that “romanticism trumps reality.” In the Pennsylvania kitchen above, for example, a gun complete with a powder horn is stored above the fireplace. “[It’s] a horrible idea, to have explosives over a fireplace,” Mican Morgan says, pointing to the small lapse from reality. But Mican Morgan doesn’t linger on it. In a collection that’s otherwise so perfect and intricate, the rogue powder horn is charming—and even humanizing.Photo: Mrs. James Ward Thorne, English Drawing Room of the Modern Period, 1930s, c. 1937. The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of Mrs. James Ward Thorne.

This summer, you could embark on a road trip with the same tired goals, such as “see the majestic Grand Canyon” or “get across state lines.” Or, you could give your summer itinerary some panache by visiting these five fashion museums, which exhibit everything from vintage Balenciaga to John McClane’s blood-stained undershirt. Our journey begins—where else?—in New York City.
1. Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art | New York City
For decades the Met’s Costume Institute Gala has been a stage for fashion-forward celebs to debut bold new looks (witness this mohawk headpiece Sarah Jessica Parker wore for 2013’s PUNK: Chaos to Couture event). But on May 8 the museum began a new chapter, unveiling renovated galleries and a new name that honors Vogue’s iconoclastic editor-in-chief, who’s served as a frequent board co-chair.
This makes now a great time to visit, especially since the collection—which includes upwards of 35,000 pieces from five continents and seven centuries—can’t be displayed year-round due to the fragility of the textiles. Another reason to go now: special exhibit Charles James: Beyond Fashion, featuring 65 of the 20th-century couturier’s most extraordinary gowns, only runs through August 10.
2. Kent State University Museum | Kent, Ohio
Though tucked away in a corner of Northeast Ohio, KSU’s museum owes its existence to Hollywood. In 1981, costume designer Shannon Rodgers, a veteran of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1934 Cleopatra, donated more than 4,000 period costumes and accessories in order to create an archival extension of KSU’s esteemed Fashion Design and Merchandising School.
But the museum’s eight galleries examine far more than costume design. Two exhibits this summer include The Great War: Women and Fashion in a World at War (opening July 24), a retrospective of World War I–era style, and Shifting Paradigms: Fashion + Technology (through August 31), which explores futuristic design techniques such as 3D printing.
3. Textile and Fashion Arts Collection at the Indianapolis Museum of Art | Indianapolis
Not only will this museum make you fawn over a dream wardrobe you’ll never get to wear (including vintage pieces from Dior, Balenciaga, Gaultier, and Chanel), but it’ll also get you drooling over furniture you’ll never get to sit on. That’s because the collection is a broad overview of all kinds of textiles. Numbering among its more than 7,000 pieces are Japanese upholstered chairs, African embroideries, and the world’s largest collection of Baluchi rugs and weavings (76!).
4. Leila’s Hair Museum | Independence, Missouri
Feeling a little off from all the Funyuns you’ve eaten on this trip? Embrace that weirdness with a stop at Leila’s Hair Museum, where you can view a former hairdresser’s collection of art made of—yup—hair. This destination lacks the majesty of the other locales (it’s a fluorescent-lit former office building), but that’s not to say it doesn’t have a touch of glamour: a collection of celebrity hair includes strands snipped from Michael Jackson and Marilyn Monroe. Most of the museum’s other pieces are more than 100 years old, focusing on the popular Victorian tradition of weaving hair into jewelry, wreaths, and even paintings.
5. Hollywood Costume Exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum | Phoenix
It’s the end of the line. You’re exhausted. Only one man can help you get your mojo back: Mr. Austin Powers. View his blue velvet suit alongside more than 100 other costumes from films such as Fight Club, Titanic, American Hustle, Star Wars, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at this exhibit, which runs through July 6.
A big part of the fun is the presentation. Instead of heads, the mannequins feature small flat-screens that play footage of each character’s face on a loop. And many mannequins strike familiar poses: Spider-Man climbs down the wall, and Kill Bill’s the Bride dives through the air with her Hattori Hanzō sword (oh yeah, there are props, too). You can also watch movie clips and listen to interviews with actors, costume designers, and directors.
Visit Groupon to find other Chicago museums to check out.
Illustration: Jennifer Jackson, Groupon

Strolling through the store with Columbia College’s Virginia Heaven taught me why the trend cycle is accelerating and why guys aren’t afraid to wear purple anymore.
History museums don’t have a monopoly on history. Just look at the State Street Macy’s—originally the flagship location of Marshall Field’s, its building was completed way back in 1892. Today, the 3-acre department store is a National Historic Landmark.
The merchandise at Macy’s has an even richer past, especially if you ask Virginia Heaven. An associate professor of fashion design at Columbia College Chicago, Heaven specializes in fashion history. She co-curated the Chicago History Museum’s Ebony Fashion Fair exhibit, and she’s currently at work on an exhibit on student design (it’s called Enduring Style: Practice Makes Perfect, and it goes up at the Willis Tower on Monday, June 2).
I met up with Heaven at Macy’s, where we explored the store and talked about the evolution of the latest trends. She began by telling me a little bit about trends in general—namely, that the trend cycle has been accelerating. “Thirty years ago,” she said, “trends lasted maybe five to seven years.” Now, they might be around for no longer than a single season.
The quicker turnover is partially due to technology: consumers can browse Pinterest and shop online at such a fast pace that trends don’t feel fresh for long. “You could be in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, looking at [clothes on your phone],” Heaven said. “There’s no pause for the digitally connected.”
Trends might flourish and wither much faster than they used to, but nothing truly dies. Heaven sees plenty of connections between what’s hot and what’s out of date. As we walked through the store, she explained the historical context behind three particular trends: one in bags, one in menswear, and one in plus-size fashion.
Along the way, we listened to many Macy’s Muzak classics, including “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
Purses (Floor 1)
Trendy item: A Furla Candy Bauletto satchel ($248), which looks like a beautiful jelly bean with a handle and comes in six colors, including bright orange.
How we got here: According to Heaven, these Furla Candy bags are probably a glamorous throwback to jelly sandals. Remember jelly sandals?
Looking further back: before the 1920s, people didn’t always carry large, structured purses like this one. Those arrived on the scene when women entered the work force en masse and had to start carrying heftier things.
Before that, there were reticules—small, floppy pouches that typically featured drawstrings and rich embroidery. “In that bag, you’d have a handkerchief, a little bit of money, and perhaps a key,” Heaven said. (Wealthy people didn’t carry keys because their servants let them in.)
Menswear (Floor 2)
Trendy item: Tasso Elba button-down in Lupine ($29.98), a bright lavender dress shirt.
How we got here: Before the '60s, clothing was considered a long-term investment. People shopped more for quality than quantity, which meant smaller wardrobes and clothes in versatile neutrals, like brown and navy. Black wasn’t a neutral yet: “[It] still had, up until the 1980s, a connotation of mourning,” Heaven said. Colored clothes were a luxury reserved for people rich enough to splurge on a less-than-versatile item.
When the '60s hit, however, cheaper, youthful styles became explosively popular. Kids were tired of wearing brown and tan. They wanted to wear brights! Haute couture quickly co-opted their rebellion, and fashion took a colorful turn.
For men in particular, several niche fashions helped make color all the more acceptable. After the Industrial Revolution, most menswear was somber-colored—but not the zoot suit, which originated in 1930s Harlem and consisted of high-waisted, pegged pants paired with a long coat.
In the 21st century, athletic gear has also helped color make its way into the mainstream. Heaven noted that if men feel like they look good in bright yellow track jackets, they are more likely to try out a colorful dress shirt.
Plus Sizes (Floor 6)
Trendy item: Jessica Howard plus-size floral-print dress and jacket ($99). “A big print on a big person—they can carry it,” Heaven said. A smaller person might look overwhelmed.
How we got here: Large floral patterns date back to the 18th century, when they were popular among the upper classes. Check out this floral brocade dress from the 1730s for a sense of what they looked like and how much the elites liked to show off their backs (a lot).
Back then, Heaven said, there was no such thing as “plus-size” clothes because clothing didn’t come in set sizes—it was custom made. Being larger, though, was something of a distinction. “It was an indication of wealth. … It simply meant you could eat well.”
In the '90s and early 2000s, the public outlook was markedly different. “Plus size” was a nascent clothing category, but obesity was stigmatized and plus-size pieces were often tucked away in dingy store basements.
Today, the average American is a size 14 (which is the smallest plus size), and the stigma has somewhat lifted, aided by plus-size style icons like Oprah Winfrey, Adele, and Emme. Smaller plus sizes can be found with regular clothing in most stores, and at Macy’s, there’s a wide variety of plus-size looks in a bright, welcoming section on the sixth floor.